Due Date

Remember that time last summer when I got pregnant? Remember how it happened even though I had an IUD, which, by the way, my doctor said was exactly where it should be and had no reason to not work? Remember how I only wanted one child, so I was totally freaking out? Remember how once I wrapped my mind around the idea and we were both excited to have a baby, I lost that baby?

I remember. I remember now, more than ever, because tomorrow would have been my due date.

I thought I was okay. I thought I was over it. I thought I had moved on.

I thought wrong.

It started in late December. Just little thoughts that would creep into my head here and there; how I would have been going into my third trimester, how we would have been getting things ready. It got worse in January. By February there was no denying it.

I want another baby.

I find myself holding up little outfits when I'm out shopping, imagining how it would feel to hold an infant in my arms. I gaze longingly at people I see with newborns when we are out and I smile. I almost started to cry looking at layette things in the children's section of Nordstrom. I found it hard to catch my breath walking by the cribs in Ikea. At this point, I think about having another baby each and every day.

I haven't told my husband. He would totally freak out, I know it. It's easier to keep it to myself, to say to myself that the reason we can't have a baby is because I won't say anything about wanting one, instead of having to say that my husband won't let us have one and having to resent him for it. I carry my pain and my longing inside of me, my secret from the world.

Except now I guess it isn't so secret. I sat outside tonight and I cried for that baby we lost last summer. I prayed so hard for that pregnancy to stick. I wanted that baby so bad. I never knew that I could want a child so much, and I never knew how much it could hurt to lose something I never thought I wanted in the first place.

I mean, when I got pregnant the first time, I wanted to have a baby. I loved that baby with all my heart, and I still do. The thing was, that was the only baby I ever planned on having. We were one and done. It wasn't until I found myself pregnant and faced with the uncertainty that it brought that I realized not only that I wanted another child, but that I wanted another child very badly.

God has a funny sense of humor sometimes.

I don't know. I don't know what to think. All I know is that today is hard and tomorrow will be harder.